Tag: Tech

A little over a month after issuing a recall of its high-end handset and at the end of weekend littered with multiple reports of malfunctioning replacement units, Samsung has reportedly suspended production on the Galaxy Note 7.

Tesla will unveil something on Monday October 17, according CEO and founder Elon Musk. It’ll be a new product, he said in a Tweet on Sunday, which will be “unexpected by most,” and which will be separate from a Tesla/SolarCity product unveiling on the 28th.

Arduino boards can certainly be used to create homebrew connected devices, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. What if you’re a rookie who has yet to master programming or wiring? That’s where Arduino’s new, crowdfunded ESLOV kit might save the day. All you have to do to create a basic Internet of Things device is snap in some plug-and-play modules, connect your creation to your PC and draw connections between those modules in an editor. You only have to dive into serious programming if you have specific needs — there’s ready-made code for common devices like air quality sensors, baby monitors and remote-controlled thermostats.

Despite the dream of the self-driving car, most autonomous vehicles still have a steering wheel, giving passengers the option to take control at a moments notice. Komatsu’s latest dump truck is a bit different — it doesn’t even have a cab for a human operator to sit in. The company calls it the Komatsu Innovative Autonomous Haulage Vehicle. It’s a 2,700 horsepower autonomous truck designed to increase productivity by taking drivers out of the equation. Specifically, the company is trying to eliminate the three-point turn by developing a vehicle that doesn’t need to see where it’s going.

There are multiple approaches to tackling self-driving; one is to program algorithms or rules that will tell a car how to behave in specific situations. Nvidia is using a deep learning approach, however, by providing its autonomous system with real-world data from humans drivers and letting it learn how to drive on its own – like a supercharged, AI-powered teenager getting behind the wheel using only their experience of being a passenger to guide them.

The world’s largest technology companies hold the keys to some of the largest databases on our planet. Much like goods and coins before it, data is becoming an important currency for the modern world. The data’s value is rooted in its applications to artificial intelligence. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns AI. Right now that means companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, IBM and Microsoft have a ton of power.

By throwing out views of less than three seconds, it overestimated average viewing times.

So here’s a funny thing about Facebook videos: it turns out people actually weren’t watching them nearly as much as the social network said. The Wall Street Journal reports that since it introduced video ads in 2014, the company miscalculated average viewing time because it didn’t include views that lasted less than three seconds. An ad buying agency says it was told by Facebook that average time spent viewing was likely overestimated by 60 to 80 percent.

This week, Uber started picking up passengers with self-driving test cars in Pittsburgh – so it’s not surprising that just a few days later, Lyft has something to say on the subject. Lyft’s response may not be autonomous cars in active duty, but it is a lengthy, detailed treatise on how Lyft sees the future of transportation over the next ten years, as penned by Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer.

The PlayStation 4 Pro is undoubtedly the most powerful game console I’ve ever seen. Its GPU (powered by AMD’s new Polaris technology) is more than twice as fast as the original PS4, and it sports a faster clock speed as well. But while Sony is marketing it as the ideal console for 4K gaming, the truth is a bit more complicated. Rendering 4K games is something that’s still tough for high-end PC gaming rigs today. So Sony is giving developers a variety of ways to make their games look better than standard 1080p titles on the PS4, even if they can’t quite reach 4K.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are here, and wouldn’t you know it — just about all those leaks were right. It goes without saying that we’re not looking at a massive redesign here, either. There are the new Black and Jet Black finishes, the camera humps have change, the antenna bands have been moved, and they’re more subtly worked into the body. The list goes on, but ultimately we’re working with iPhones that look and feel quite a bit like last year’s models.